Quote from: Warthur;364415Have you ever seen The Wire or The Shield?

I think The Wire is procedural, The Sheild not so much.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Balbinus;364402Regardless of your system preferences, for a US setting Gurps Cops is bloody good, Gurps SWAT's good too but less generally applicable.

I wasn't aware there was GURPS Cops; good to know there is one. I remember Steve Jackson posting on the SJG bbs long ago (when it was a dial-up) that he'd played around a bit with cops scenarios and felt they were an untapped vein (or something like that).

QuoteIt's the lack of magic and cool powers, games without those don't tend to get made and when they are made don't tend to sell.  The lack of them being made may be linked to the lack of sales when they are of course...

I agree with you on this, I'm sorry to say.

Still, lately I've been watching The Streets of San Francisco, and it's really a very enjoyable show, not to mention my wife, who's an immigrant and too young to have caught it the first time around, also got right into it without any prompting. I think I'll graduate her to Kojak next, since I never really watched it. Mannix, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, Ironside though were all good stuff in my rosy-tinted view. Columbo of course is great but I don't think he's easy to do as an RPG--requires too much deductive & proactive cleverness on the part of the PC.

I've suggested in the past that Clash ought to look into making a game of the genre.

The railroad aspect is a problem. Personally, depending on how you do the game, I don't think it has to be. One thing to note is that a procedural is not a mystery (again, this suggests why Columbo doesn't fit). The clues aren't very difficult to spot, and even if you miss them, there are other things happening that keep the case alive. E.g., the bad guy commits additional crimes, or people who are affected by the crimes or who know something about them do things in response, which demands the police's attention.

So it's not like you have to force the PCs along a trail of fudged investigation rolls. You do have to ask though what can make it interesting to solve often straightforward cases. And that is where Clash's perspective comes in, because what he's said about the promotion system he uses in a number of his games seems to fit right in. You're not only competing with the criminal, but also with other cops, even if they're not necessarily "bad cops" (though there may be personal animosity in some cases). Also, in "Streets" at least, there often is a wildcard that the police have to deal with: a vigilante, family tensions, etc. In short, there's a relationship map that they step into when they take on a case.

Finally, in a more realistic approach as found in early seasons of "Homicide: Life in the Streets", the PCs don't work on one case at a time and they don't necessarily solve every case. You've got a lot of cases to deal with, and your goal is to turn as many red names on the dry erase board into black ones as you can.

GUMSHOE is superb for this purpose; I'd get Mutant City Blues and chop off the superpowers. Which is easy. There may now be a slew of people who haven't played explaining how it's a game about railroading, but I am here to tell you that I have played GUMSHOE and I was worried about railroading and was pleasantly surprised.

Quote from: Thanlis;364430GUMSHOE is superb for this purpose; I'd get Mutant City Blues and chop off the superpowers. Which is easy. There may now be a slew of people who haven't played explaining how it's a game about railroading, but I am here to tell you that I have played GUMSHOE and I was worried about railroading and was pleasantly surprised.

I was going to mention GUMSHOE myself, though I've never played it. Care to elaborate?

Quote from: Warthur;364401I think it's simply a matter of genre blindness. Geeks tend to like SF and fantasy and horror and tend to dislike crime - or at least, that's the common stereotype. I fully believe that there's a great print RPG to be made in the genre - and whichever firm cracks it first will make a mint out of it.

Right, I'm talking about writing games to those likely to buy them. Your average fan of a police procedural are not nominally RPG players. Not that I'm saying those shows are bad, I've enjoyed a few of them myself, particularly early CSI, and now NCIS, and HOUSE which is somewhat the same but medical investigation.*

While you can write a game on any subject you still mostly have to sell it to those people who make D&D popular or near relatives along the line.



*Of course I watch less TV each year it seems.

Quote from: Silverlion;364443*Of course I watch less TV each year it seems.

Same here.  The only police procedural show I still watch regularly, is Criminal Minds.

Otherwise, I don't really watch as much TV anymore.  Occasionally I'll still watch science and history documentaries on various cable channels.

You Mean This?




Also happened to pickup this at this same time. One of my few overseas direct mail order buys. Totally worth it though...



The books came pre-packaged in the following baggy:


This is out of print now. It complements my Spycraft 2.0 game stuff very well.

Published by Hogshead Publishing, in the U.K. This should have been in gaming stores near you!

You don´t need a fucking "game" for this. The problem is the lack of MODULES.

Quote from: David R;364425I think The Wire is procedural, The Sheild not so much.

Regards,
David R

You sure? The Shield, for most of its run, had the case-of-the-week structure of most procedurals in addition to the ongoing plot...

Quote from: Silverlion;364443Right, I'm talking about writing games to those likely to buy them. Your average fan of a police procedural are not nominally RPG players.

But does your average RPG player watch any police procedurals? I mean, I do. More or less everyone I know does, including gamers.

If gamers are really so fussy in their tastes that they won't give a police procedural RPG a second look then something is seriously wrong with gamer culture at the moment. But I honestly don't think they are that fussy.

Quote from: GameDaddy;364459You Mean This?

Weren't those D20 supplements rather than standalone games? Bit of a shame they never got much publicity either way.

Quote from: SettembriniYou don´t need a fucking "game" for this. The problem is the lack of MODULES.

By this argument we only ever need one game system and can get by with modules supporting differing genres...

Quote from: Warthur;364471You sure? The Shield, for most of its run, had the case-of-the-week structure of most procedurals in addition to the ongoing plot...

Well I think The Sheild falls into the category of cop dramas like NYPD Blue etc (which I suppose means the dramatic character aspects are center stage) . Procedurals are more like The Wire, Homicide etc.

Regards,
David R

Don´t be dense, Warthur. The specific case of crime investigation as an  adventure game topic that obviously doesn´t fly is to be explained by the lack of modules and nothing else. That includes the hard task of consistently coming up with gameable material on your own.
Case closed.

Quote from: David R;364476Well I think The Sheild falls into the category of cop dramas like NYPD Blue etc (which I suppose means the dramatic character aspects are center stage) . Procedurals are more like The Wire, Homicide etc.

I think there's sufficient overlap between the genres that a game that covered one ought to be able to cover both.

Quote from: Settembrini;364478Don´t be dense, Warthur. The specific case of crime investigation as an  adventure game topic that obviously doesn´t fly is to be explained by the lack of modules and nothing else. That includes the hard task of consistently coming up with gameable material on your own.
Case closed.

Except there are plenty of investigative modules centred around crimes. It's just that at the end of the day the crimes turn out to be perpetrated by occult horrors.

It's just a hop, skip, and a jump to go from "Cthulhoid cult is killing people to summon their god" to "serial killer is killing people because he thinks that will summon his god".

Really, the biggest change isn't the premise of the investigation, it's the status of the investigators. They're not a bunch of 1920s university professors (to use Call of Cthulhu as an example, since it's the most popular investigative-themed RPG out there), they're officers of the law. This gives them certain powers civilians don't have, but also certain constraints. On the other hand, within the context of CoC at least, there's been plenty of consideration of how that would work - especially in Delta Green and its supplements. But I honestly don't think that having PCs be police officers is a hurdle that is impossible to overcome.